tools – Page 3 – Help-U-Sell® Connect

ProCoach University Preview: Lead Management

We are wrapping up production of the video lessons for ProCoach University, our new online training tool for new and seasoned franchisees. One of the lessons covers lead management and how to effectively convert leads into clients. With the tight inventory situations many markets are facing, it’s more important than ever to cultivate and convert leads, especially seller leads.

The video begins by posing two questions you should know how to answer before starting any marketing campaign:

ProCoach University's Lead Management video lesson — Help-U-Sell Real Estate's ProCoach University video on lead management teaches brokers to start out with clear goals.

Packed into fewer than eight minutes are a list of five things you should know prior to any campaign’s kickoff (current status, where your advertising will appear and why, what it’s costing, what specific results you hope to achieve, what success will look like) and the six moments of truth in the lead management cycle. What are those half dozen revealing junctures? They’re the different phases on your way to converting an inquiry to a closing, and you need to examine each one to uncover any areas where there could be improvement.

The final segment of the video lesson looks at lead management step by step, including documenting your inquiries and keeping your lead records up to date.

Measuring against benchmarks and goals every step of the way from generation to conversion will help you to refine your generation and management system, making it more cost-effective so that you can save clients even more money.

Help-U-Sell brokers, if you would like to have access to ProCoach University, contact us so that we can set up your account. If you’re not a franchisee yet, you can join the Help-U-Sell family for as little as $2,500 in up-front fees and gain access to our online and one-on-one coaching training. Learn more at our Franchise Opportunity Center.

OMS Upgrades – Contacts Module

We’ve improved the office contacts module to make it easier for you to manage your buyers, sellers and other people, such as vendors, whom you communicate with regularly.

The redesigned module allows you to sort by first name, last name, contact type, and email address. This way, you can quickly locate a contact’s information or just see all of your sellers listed together.

Help-U-Sell Real Estate Office Contacts Module — The updated Office Contacts module allows you to sort your contacts and to see what they're subscribed to at a glance.

With the addition of the acronym icons, it is easy to tell at a glance who is subscribed to what services you offer. FTK stands for First to Know, the email alerts buyers receive when new properties that fit the buyers’ criteria come on the market. DEC means Drip Email Campaign. S.LGN is the Sellers’ Login that enables sellers to view some back-end information about their listings and to share documents with you.

By clicking the View button to the right of the icons, you can look at the contact’s more detailed information, including phone number, birthday, listing address (if the contact is a seller), search criteria (if a buyer is signed up for FTK), and drip email campaigns. You are also able to edit or add to contact information from this screen.

Have you tried it out yet? Let us know how you like it and if you have any requests or suggestions for further enhancements.

New Marketing Tools for Brand Recognition

As the weather gets warmer in most of the country and you hold more open houses and sell more homes, how will you ensure that you’ll stay top of mind after you close the door or the transaction?

Following up via a drip email campaign, phone calls and requests for testimonials, where appropriate, are a few ways. You can also give out useful items that will remind your open house visitors and clients of Help-U-Sell Real Estate every time they need to jot a few notes or have morning coffee.

Our print-on-demand vendor, Alexander’s Print Advantage, has just added a line of promotional items. The Help-U-Sell Real Estate logo can be placed on all of the items, and magnets can be personalized with your contact information. Notepads will also be available for personalization soon.

Help-U-Sell Real Estate travel mug — Help-U-Sell Real Estate promotional marketing tools include a travel mug.

Some ideas for recipient-item pairings:

Buyers – tape measures.

Clients who are closing – wine glasses.

Agents – travel mugs.

Open house visitors – pens.

Alexander’s also offers an array of golf ball brands, tote bags, key chains and bottle openers. If there any other items you would like to put the Help-U-Sell logo on, contact us or speak with Alexander’s directly. You can view the entire selection by going to Alexander’s Help-U-Sell site and clicking on Promotions.

While you’re there, take a look at the Holiday Cards, too. We now have cards for seven holidays available, including Memorial Day.

What is your favorite item to give away?

Sold and Saved Banners Added to Broker Websites

During our annual Help-U-Sell Success Summit, several brokers requested we add a Sold and Saved $x,xxx banner to all Sold listings on the broker websites.

Last week, we worked on this feature and launched it over the weekend. You will now have the option to show either a Sold banner on your sold listings, or the Sold and Saved $x,xxx banner.

Help-U-Sell Real Estate Sold and Saved Banner — By request from some of our brokers at this month's Success Summit, we've added Sold and Saved banners to the broker websites.

We calculate the dollar savings by taking the amount you reported on the listing side of the transaction (if you represented the seller only), add 3% for the selling side, then compare the savings to a 6% commission. If you represented both the seller and the buyer, we take what you reported on both the listings and selling sides and compare it to a 6% commission.

We also are aware that in some cases, such as REOs, you may receive a full 6% on the transaction and therefore have $0 savings. To account for this, we will only display the Sold and Saved banner when the savings exceed $1,000. When the savings are below $1,000, we will only display the Sold banner.

We look forward to your feedback on this new feature. We also want to thank the brokers who participated at this year’s Success Summit and came up with this and several other great initiatives.

OMS Addition – Drip Email Module

The highly anticipated drip email module is close to completion. We aim to launch officially next Tuesday, Sept. 4, but it is available now via OMS. You can access it under the Marketing & Content tab.

The module, named Drip Email Setup, has been preloaded with a few drip email campaigns, including ones for newly registered buyers and sellers, and agents you’re recruiting. We will add more in the next few weeks. You can modify all of the existing campaigns to fit your writing style, and we encourage you to localize them to your office and marketplace. We have embedded some automated personalization into the emails. For instance, the signature will include ##OFFICE_NAME##, which will be filled in with your office name when the email is delivered. A cheat sheet containing these personalizations will be accessible in the module soon.

You can also create new emails for the campaigns we’ve created, as well as create whole new campaigns. All of the emails have headers, footers and images that you are free to use for your new emails. The system will allow you to upload your own images, too.

Help-U-Sell Drip Email Module — The new Help-U-Sell drip email module enables brokers to edit existing emails, create new ones, schedule messages and make new campaigns.

After you have your campaign messages ready, you can set up the emails to send out automatically on a schedule that you determine. For example, within a campaign, the first email would be indicated as the #1 message with 0 days’ delay. The second email would be named #2 and send out 7 days (or however many days you choose) after the first email is sent, and so on. You will also be able to create and schedule recurring emails. We suggest you use the Test Email button to see how the email will appear to the recipient before you send out the email.

You will set up your campaigns and monitor the results in the Campaign Setup section. The Active Campaigns tab lets you see when campaigns began, their statuses and how many contacts have received each message. Clicking on the View Details button will display when a campaign’s emails were sent (or will be sent), who received them and whether a recipient is active or unsubscribed from your campaigns.

Active Drip Email Campaigns — Brokers can view all active email campaigns to see when the emails have been or will be sent out.

The Setup Campaign tab is where you select your contacts to receive each campaign’s emails. You can also change the “from” address (by default it is “noreply@helpusell.com”) and the date your campaign will start.

Help-U-Sell Drip Email Campaign Setup Screen — The Setup Campaign tab is where you choose who receives the emails for each campaign.

The last piece of the puzzle is your contacts. You will want to make sure your office contacts are up-to-date and in good order. This is where the module will obtain the contact lists for your campaigns. You can create new contact lists in My Office Contacts. Some examples of useful contacts lists include past clients, potential agents and seller prospects.

How do you plan to use the drip email module? Tell us your campaign ideas. Also, we encourage you to test out the module this week, and if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us.